Breaking Ties, A Primer…

Tiebreakers are coming into focus, and you know we will need them. You should know them. It’s great information to have at parties, but really only those parties where CAA basketball is discussed.

Obviously, the first tiebreaker is head-to-head. If more than two teams are tied, it follows to head-to-head of all teams involved in the tie. (The third is best record against the #1 seed, and then the #2 seed, etc.)

The big battle is for the #3 and #4 four seed and the day of rest. Interestingly, this Wednesday ends round robin for all the teams involved so these records can be frozen for tiebreaking purposes. We will refer back to them as the situation develops.

Composite Head-to-Head of Mason, Drexel, JMU, Hofstra, ODU:

Mason 4-2

Drexel 1-0, vs. 2/18

JMU 1-1

Hofstra 1-0

ODU 1-1

Drexel 2-3

GMU 0-1, @2/18

JMU 0-1

Hofstra 2-0

ODU 0-1

JMU 3-3

GMU 1-1

Drexel 1-0

Hofstra 0-1, @2/18

ODU 1-1

Hofstra 2-3

GMU 0-1

Drexel 0-2

JMU 1-0, vs. 2/18

ODU 1-0

ODU 3-3

GMU 1-1

Drexel 1-0

JMU 1-1

Hofstra 0-1

George Mason is clearly in the driver’s seat so let’s run a scenario. If Mason beats Drexel at the Patriot Center on Wednesday (where Mason has not lost this season), the #3 seed is taken care of whether it ends up being Mason, NU, or VCU.

It gets very interesting if that does occur, so let’s pretend Mason wins for a minute. We would then factor out the Patriots, leaving the head-to-heads as:

Drexel 2-2, JMU 2-2, Hofstra 2-2, ODU 2-2.

How big is does JMU at Hofstra become?

Side note: Remember at the top, NU>VCU>GMU in all tiebreaking situations; at the bottom Delaware and Georgia State split; Georgia State and Towson split; and Towson won at Delaware and hosts the Hens on Feb. 25. Advantage PK.

I do. I even wrote out the possibilities on a napkin (no really, on a napkin) and it tells me that losses at DU and against ODU would put NU on the outside looking in of the bye.

Stealing from a fellow DU alum… It’s Bizzaro Association. At this point though, all teams need to be in “just win” mode. DU was good today, but wasn’t great. I’ll be at the Mason game and it should be fun, but I’m not optimistic either.

“Just win” seems to sum it up perfectly. I keep waiting for my Patriots to slip up once at home this season, but it hasn’t happened yet. Drexel has a great shot on Wed. night. That 1st half vs. NE was downright ugly, but the 2nd half gave me some hope for the games this week. We’ll see what happens. It should be a dandy in Fairfax (or an ugly defensive battle).